


Adrift

by creatureofhobbit



Category: Pretty Little Liars
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-24
Updated: 2015-01-24
Packaged: 2018-03-08 19:41:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3221012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creatureofhobbit/pseuds/creatureofhobbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jason wonders if he was right to break Alison's alibi.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Adrift

From the moment Jason looked at that footage of the blonde person in the hoodie captured on Mona Vanderwaal’s camera, he wondered whether he had done the right thing. He’d known even as he said it that nothing could ever be the same again. But what difference did it make? Nothing was ever going to be the same again anyway. He wondered again as he sat across from Alison in the prison visiting room, not knowing what he could say to her, not knowing why he’d even gone. Okay, so that wasn’t technically true. He’d gone in the hope of getting some answers. But he also knew that Alison was never going to give him any.

It was the uncertainty that he couldn’t stand. Sure, that could have been Ali on the footage. But it could have been Cece, or just about anyone wearing a wig. But the reason he’d admitted that Alison hadn’t been with him on Thanksgiving wasn’t about Mona Vanderwaal, who Jason hadn’t even known that well. It was about his mother. Jason had asked himself so many times since it happened, who could have buried his mother in the Hastings’ yard. The woman might have been the reason that Jason’s entire life had been based on a lie, but she was still his mother. He hadn’t wanted to believe it could have been Ali at first, but the suspicion had slowly dawned on him. Hell, she’d let her family believe she was dead for two years. Ali was capable of anything. And every time he looked at his sister now, he found himself wondering what she knew that she wasn’t telling. Jason wondered now why he’d ever thought he could get answers from Alison, since she’d just feed him some lie anyway. Sometimes, as she’d tell some story with this innocent look on her face and other people would just eat it up, he’d wondered whether she even believed some of her own lies. 

It had been just the same when she was questioned about her whereabouts when Mona was killed. He’d gone along with the lie initially because he thought it was what he had to do to save what was left of his family. Jason had seen the look on Kenneth’s face when Tanner had turned to him and asked him whether he could corroborate Alison’s story, and he’d known then what he was expected to say. _Does it really not bother you?_ Jason had wanted to grab hold of his father and shake him as his father lied that Alison had been home with them all night. _You may have been divorcing at the time she died, but she was still our mother, still the woman you were married to for years. Ali could have had something to do with it, and you’re defending her?_ But he had known that he couldn’t say that. Kenneth glared at him, and Jason knew that there was only one thing he could say: “Ali was home with us on Thanksgiving.” At least he didn’t have to come up with some crazy crap about the turkey they’d eaten or the movie they’d watched. But he’d turned his back on his family and walked away the minute Tanner was gone, and had found himself heading in the direction of the nearest bar before having second thoughts and realising that was a very bad idea.

Jason had thought at the time that by backing up Ali’s story, he’d be keeping together what was left of his family. Now he wasn’t sure he’d ever really been part of that family anyway. What was he but his mother’s dirty little secret? He and his father had never been close even before Jason had found out that Peter Hastings was his real father. Jason still wasn’t sure quite how much his father had known. The day he’d confronted his mother, she’d begged him not to say anything. But Jason had often wondered whether Kenneth knew all along. It would have explained why he and Grandma D had always favoured Alison over Jason throughout their childhood, why there were three whole baby photo albums of Alison while Jason appeared to have none at all.

If it had been Jason who had been suspected of murder, what would his family have done? His so called father wouldn’t have given him an alibi like he’d done for Alison, that was for sure. Kenneth DiLaurentis would have thrown Jason to the wolves, finally able to wash his hands of him in the way he probably wished he could have done long ago. And as for his biological father, well, Peter Hastings would probably have thrown money at some fancy hot-shot lawyer friend of his to defend Jason, but because he felt he had to, not because he wanted to. Ali? She’d most likely have been the one planting the evidence.

But Spencer? Would she have cut him off in the same way his so called family would have done? Jason wasn’t sure that she would. And he wondered now why he was siding with the DiLaurentis family over the one family member he had who he didn’t believe had lied to him. He and Spencer had had their moments, but Jason had never thought she was capable of murder and it had come as a shock to him when she was first accused of killing Bethany Young. He couldn’t, hand on heart, say that about Alison. So he knew he could no longer continue giving her a false alibi.

Ashley Marin probably thought Jason was putting on a brave face when he told her that he’d been kicked out of the family home and didn’t talk to his father any more. The truth was, in some ways he’d thought it would be kind of a relief to be away from the family he no longer felt like he belonged to once his mother was no longer there. To some extent, that was true, but there was another part of him that still questioned whether he should have continued the lie. He may never have felt like he fitted in with his family, but it was only now that he had made the break from them that he questioned whether he belonged anywhere else either. He’d thought he was doing the right thing. But now he felt that all he had done was cast himself adrift from all around him.


End file.
